Sunday, 26 June 2016

In 1992 spring I prepared for my trip to West-Africa, a part of it was checking music from the area. After hearing just one song from Oumou, immediately bought her first album 'Moussoulou', it's still one of my all time favourites. In the following years saw her several times performing live, each time absolutely brilliant with that subtle swinging groove, throwing the calabashes with shells and the powerful vocals by both Oumou and the backing girls.

Unfortunately never could tape nor get some concert recordings of Oumou in the 1990s. In recent years I could catch some individual live tracks from various performances and sources, as it's only 5 tracks from 1993 till 1996, I added some K7 only tracks from the early 2000s catched from a radio special.

Short Introduction to Oumou Sangaré

Oumou Sangaré, born 1968 in Bamako, is a Malian Wassoulou musician. Sangaré's mother was the singer Aminata Diakité. As a child, Oumou Sangaré sang in order to help her mother feed their family as her father had abandoned them. At the age of five, she was well known for her talents as a gifted singer. After making it to the finals of a contest for the nursery schools of Bamako, she performed in front of a crowd of 6.000 at the Omnisport Stadium. At 16 she went on tour with the percussion group Djoliba.
Oumou Sangaré recorded her first album Moussoulou ("Women") in 1989 in Abidjan with Amadou Ba Guindo, a renowned maestro of Malian music. With more than 200,000 copies sold, the album (K7) was an unprecedented West African hit. At the age of 21 she was already a star. With the help of Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré signed (in 1991?) with the English label World Circuit.
Oumou's music has been inspired by the music and traditional dances of the Wassoulou region in south-east Mali. She writes and composes her songs, which often include social criticism, especially concerning women's low status in society. Many of Oumou's songs concern love and marriage, especially freedom of choice in marriage, she supports the cause of women throughout the world. More about Oumou Sangaré at wikipedia (basic only) and in various 'album extras' at worldcircuit (in depth).
Listen to a track from the 1994 Druga Godba Festival in Slovenia

Saturday, 18 June 2016

This time some music from a land without mango trees, but their blowing of the horns sounds manguetic to my ears, and their speed.........., at each speed control they'll get a ticket, but luckily can return it by blowing some more!
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Fanfare Ciocarlia on their way to play live (just stopped by the police)

And the chain, well no links to recent posts, just in one of the first posts here Awards for World Music Concert (2006) is included one track and interview with this ear blowing band from the village of Zece Prajini - meaning Seven Fields - in Romania.

Fanfare Ciocarlia - 'Kings & Queens'

Bosnian melancholy and French flamenco fire meet the virtuoso wind orchestra from Romaniasource: info for 2007 Music Meeting
A little less than ten years ago trumpeter Lazar Radulescu of Fanfare Ciocarlia spoke the - almost - prophetic words: "We have made ​​music at weddings in Zece Prajini and the rest of Moldova. We play now in Germany, France and Belgium.Next year we are in America and Bulgaria. A few more years and we'll play on Mars. Just watch!" Since then, the Romanian gypsy orchestra has astonished theaters, pop venues and festivals all over the world with their dexterous, melancholic and danceable rumbas, horas and sirbas. It was a hectic time with peaks of 30 gigs in one month. On their website are, next to the bizarre amount of tour dates, lists with international reviews.
After four successful CDs and one DVD there is also a new challenge: to bring gypsy music, which is becoming more popular is in the rest of the world, back to their own Romania. The Roma and their culture were largely tucked away in the time of Ceausescu and after the fall of the dictator in 1989 that changed only gradually. In Romania Gypsy culture is still not seen as part of the Romanian society.

in 2006 at first ever concert in Romania

In 2006 December there is a milestone for the Fanfare: it performs its first concert in its own capital Bucharest. And not alone: for the occasion its members are assisted by renowned Roma musicians from all over Europe, like the Macedonian diva Esma Redzepova and three French gitanes from the band Kaloome. Unfortunately without the participation of clarinetist Ioan Ivancea, doyen of the Fanfare and champion of Roma culture. He died in 2006 October.
The orchestra travels through Europe to make more recordings with fellow musicians for the new album 'Kings & Queens'. Not only Redzepova and Kaloome are involved, also the electro-gypsy Mitsou, sexy rocker Jony Iliev
and Serbian crooner Saban Bajramovic participate. The result is a surprisingly balanced and beautiful album in which the various gypsy traditions have their place. The album, released in 2007 March, is dedicated to Ioan Ivancea.
At the Music Meeting will play a unique delegation of Queens & Kings. First, the eleven men of Fanfare Ciocarlia (trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, tuba, horn and percussion), and their dancers Aurelia Tantica. Then the guest musicians: Bosnian Ljiljana Buttler with her through life marked, ​​almost masculine voice, and from the south of France Perpignan Tato Garcia, Christ Maille and Sabrina Romero from the band Kaloome. Especially the cooperation with Kaloome is surprising. The musicians of Ciocarlia reduce their pace a little, to give space to the Spanish guitar, the handclapping and the flamenco vocals. The music of the Catalan gitanes fits perfectly into that of Ciocarlia. All in all the show in Nijmegen will resemble the liberating concert in Bucharest. This is Fanfare Ciocarlia - plus!performance: Sunday 2007.May.27 - De Kathedraal - Park Brakkensteinline-up: Costica Trifan - trumpet, vocals / Paul-Marian Bulgaru - trumpet / Lazar Radulescu - trumpet, vocals / Oprică Ivancea - clarinet, alto sax / Dan Ionel Ivancea - alto sax / Constantin Cantea - tuba / Monel Trifan - tuba / Constantin Calin - tenor horn, vocals, dance / Laurentiu Ivancea - baritone horn / Costel Ursu - bass drum / Nicolae Ionita - percussion / Antoine "Tato" Garcia - guitar / Christchurch Mailhe - guitar, vocals / Sabrina Romero - vocals, dance, cajón / Aurelia & Tantica - dance / Ljiljana Buttler - vocals

Saturday, 11 June 2016

Continuing the chain, see previous post the link being Vincent Bucher (with his harmonica), with two recordings by Boubacar 'Kar Kar' Traoré.

The first being a 1991 radio session for BBC Radio1 Andy Kershaw, this was recorded during the tour after his first international release.
The second a 2011 live recording (feat.Vincent Bucher) from La Cigale, Paris, recorded by his record company Lusafrica and distributed to radio stations as a promotional disc for his then actual 'Mali Denhou' album.
By the way Boubacar got his nick name 'Kar Kar', when playing footbal in his teens, it means "the one who dribbles too much", that nicely fits with the start of EURO 2016, the European Footbal Championship.

Introduction to Boubacar Traoré

by Lieve Joris* (from liner notes to Sa Golo, 1997)

In the sixties the people of Mali awoke each morning to the sound of his melancholy voice on the radio which sang of independence. Kar Kar, he was called "black jacket" and every person in Mali of his generation remembers having danced to his hits "Mali Twist" and "Kayeba" in which he encouraged his compatriots to return and build the country. He was the Chuck Berry, the Elvis Presley of Mali, but since his music was only diffused on the radio, he didn't have enough pocket money to buy cigarettes. He worked as a tailor, a salesman and an agricultural agent, while at the same time training orchestras in the evenings and singing for his close friends.
In 1987, when television finally invites him into the studio, the Malian people cannot believe their eyes, everyone thought he had disappeared. Two years later he is dealt a blow, Pierrette, his beloved wife to whom he sings his sweetest songs, dies. Disoriented, with a heavy heart, he leaves for France to work. On weekends he sings in people's homes. His career takes on a new life. London discovers him, he records two albums there, "Mariama" and "Kar Kar'. He gives concerts in England, Switzerland, Canada and the United States. Studio Bogolan in Bamako, at the "Revue Noire" Initiative, produces his third album, "Les Enfants de Pierrette" ("Pierrette's Children"), with the participation of the big names in Malian music like Ali Farka Touré, Toumani Diabaté and Kélètigui Diabaté.
After a twenty year absence from the stage, Boubacar Traoré has risen from the ashes of his own life. It is so far from obvious that he is still singing and yet he is here as if he had never done anything else. Faithful to his roots, for the recording of this new album (on Indigo), he sought out Baba Dramé, accomplice and childhood friend, in his hometown of Kayes to accompany him on the calabash. On the title song "Sa Golo", they are in the Kayes of the past where magicians in clanging outfits made the night air resonate.

Boubacar Traoré is one of these solid men who reflect the history of a country, the hopes and the despairs of a people. How fortunate that he kept his voice, ant that a song like Soundiata, which inspired an entire generation, be recorded at last. What luck to find this child of Malian Independence matured and, despite all of his misadventures, close to the tiny pleasures of life. Hot a Mercedes or a villa with golden chandeliers for this Malian blues man, but a moped and a concession in the hills of Bamako where he lives with Pierrette's children and where, in the evenings, he takes out his guitar and sings about the world which surrounds him. *Lieve Joris is the author of the book 'Mali Blues', in which the main story is about her travels through Mali together with Boubacar. (Highly Recommended!!)

Saturday, 4 June 2016

I like making connections with the previous post, like making a musical chain. This time even two links: the radio program and the record label, Glitterbeat based in Germany, and having released an impressive amount of manguetic music, like Aziza Brahim, Bassekou Kouyaté, Noura Mint Seymali, Tamikrest, Samba Touré, and the subject of this post Lobi Traoré.
From Lobi I present you a concert recording from early in his (unfortunately by his death in 2010 stopped) career in 1994 in Köln, which was last year rebroadcasted by FunkHaus Europa - World Live.

Biography of Lobi Traoré (from 2003 by MAJ)

Lobi Traoré was born in 1961 in Bakaridianna, on the left bank of the Niger, some twenty kilometres from Ségou. He's the son of Samba and Nana Djiré, both singers in the "komo" secret society.
Lobi then became an "initiated" directly at birth. Generally in komo, men become true adults quite late. Before circumcision, the adolescent joins the "komo", and for three or four months undergoes tests of character such as leaping across fire, passing through a forest inhabited by lions and hyenas, or going a whole day without food and water.
In the second phase, the true initiation, both his knowledge and behaviour are subject to scrutiny before he is allowed to enter into the mystery of the "komo". He gives his word never to betray the secret society or to reveal its mysteries; this is why the Bambara say: "When you join the komo, you never leave".
When you mention the word "komo" to Lobi Traoré, his expression goes blank as if he hadn't heard you and there's no point insisting! he can not and must not speak of the komo ! He took his footsteps in this traditional family of artists and has an approach of music which is evidence which can not be called in question.
At 16, he crossed the river and arrived in Ségou to join a folk group as a Bambara singer. He then left for Bamako and played in another similar outfit before meeting his first musical master, who gave him a guitar.
Three years later he discovered the Djata Band, Zani Diabaté's orchestra, then the rage in Bamako; this was one of the first Malian orchestras to tour France in the early eighties, to sing the Bambara repertoire. (Mali includes many ethnic groups and in each musical formation there are often several singers, each addressing their own ethnic public, be they bozo "fishermen", peuhl "shepherd people" or Songhai, "they are from the Timbuktu region"). When Lobi Traoré started his solo career he played for weddings and in bars. It's at the Bozo, an important live music venue (now closed) in Bamako famous for its beer, that the public discovered and appreciated his Bambara blues in the early nineties. Since then he has recorded three albums and toured extensively in Europe, Canada and Africa. He also met the Paris blues harmonica player Vincent Bucher who accompanies him often and has helped him develop the material for Duga album.
When blues from Bamako meets blues from Chicago...
During his last tour in 1996 May Lobi Traore invited Vincent Bucher* with his harmonica for a jam on the stage of the New Morning in Paris. And it sounded as if they always played together. "Immersed in a superb dialogue, the guitarist-vocalist and the amazing harmonica player weaved a heart-rending music, like a furious wind that would have been captured by the Sahel desert". This meeting has now given birth to a trio with a calebash player to give the tempo. Lobi Traore plays his mesmerizing ballads and sings his songs in honour of the ancient Bambara kings in the bars of Bamako.

source: mali-music.com

His melancholic, orphan songs (his words) make him a bluesman without his realising it. In 1994 he gathered a group of percussionists (calebasse, bongolo, djembe) around him, pushing his music even further towards an ever more exciting mix of traditional and modern sound.
He toured with this band in Europe (Germany, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and France) and Africa between 1994 and 1996. He recorded his first album "Bambara Blues" in 1991, then "Bamako" (1994) and "Segou" (1996) under musical direction of Ali Farka Touré.

notes MangueMusic: I included this mali-music biography, because I like the Malian perspective in it. But as it's from 2003, it's not actual and doesn't mention his sudden and completely unexpected death in 2010.Jun. If you want to read a more recent biography, check this one from his last international record label.*in recent years Vincent Bucher has performed and recorded with Boubacar 'Kar Kar' Traoré

Listen/Watch more from Lobi:

The coming week the FHE - World Live program has some interesting artists: Mamar Kassey on wednesday Jun.08 / Imarhan on friday Jun.10. After broadcast the shows can be listened to (for the next day only!) on the loop.

About Me

This blog is made out of love for the music here presented in softcopy, if you like something, best support the music and artists by trying to buy a hardcopy yourself and visiting their concerts.

On this blog will be presented: original K7s with music from all over the world, radio broadcasts of live concerts (from K7 recordings and/or radio streams), all sorts of other musical items.Note: selections based on personal manguetic taste.

MY WISH LIST:music I know exist, never have heard, but love to have listened to at least once*Doura Barry - Laureat de Guinea (K7)*Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - early K7s*1980s live recs Super Biton*1980s/90s live recs Bembeya Jazz*1990s live recs Oumou Sangare*1980-85 live recs King Sunny Ade*1979-86 live recs Amazones de Guinee*recs Andy Kershaw BBC Sessions*recs BBC World Music Awards*Tinariwen - early K7s (1992/93)(will be continuous updated)